Indian police have arrested a man posing as a doctor, charging him with illegally aborting female fetuses and then flushing them down the toilet. A.K. Singh ran an illegal clinic in Gurgaon (a Delhi suburb) offering sex-determination tests and abortions.

Abortion is legal in India, but the government outlawed abortion based on the sex of the fetus in 1994. Police found tiny skulls and bones in the clinic’s septic tank, as well as a pile of partly burned fetuses in the clinic building. Singh confessed to the crime, but Indian law does not accept confessions made in police custody unless they are repeated in court.

The Indian government reports that about 10 million girls have been killed over the past 20 years.  Many regions of India, including Gurgaon, report only 800 girls born for every 1,000 boys. Indian parents tend to prefer sons because daughters are expensive to marry off.

For more information, please see:

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070615/137/6h15g.html

http://www.indiadaily.org/entry/aborted-female-foetuses-found-in-gurgaon/

A 16-year-old Chinese boy, Chen, an ex-slave, told his story to the media this week. He reported that he accepted a job at a factory from a man that approached him at a train station.

He said that he was taken to a brick yard, where he was fed minimally, beaten, and forced to work without pay. As a result, his body is pocked with sores from being beaten by the guards.

Recently police have raided thousands of Chinese coal mines, freeing hundreds of workers.

The boy claims that until the raid, police were bribed by the owners of the mines. He went without a bed, shower, health care, or hair cut. Chen said that he was beaten the guards with iron bars, sticks, or bricks if he worked too slowly. 

Chen and his family are now worried about the possibility of retaliation by the brickyard and they agreed to be interviewed by media only after receiving assurances that the exact location of their home would not be identified.

Since the coal-mine scandal broke last month, more than 8,000 kilns and small coal mines in Shanxi and Henan provinces have been raided, with 591 workers freed, including 51 children.

About 160 suspected kiln bosses have been detained, and at least one village-level Communist Party secretary expelled from the party after his son was found to be operating a kiln where 31 slaves were found laboring under harsh conditions.

For more information, please see:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070620/ap_on_re_as/china_slavery

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/world/asia/23china.html?ref=asia

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/jan-june07/labor_06-25.html

A group of about one hundred Japanese lawmakers has said the Chinese estimate of the death toll in the ‘Rape of Nanking’ massacre has been grossly inflated.  This disagreement has led to increased friction between the two countries.  The Japanese lawmakers compiled a study indicating the deaths to be 20,000.  China has estimated the number to be over 300,000 deaths.  Historians, however, have generally  agreed that at least 150,000 civilians were slaughters and thousands of Chinese women were raped in the 1937 attack in Nanjing, then called Nanking.

When the Japanese seized the city of Nanjing in 1937, they raped thousands of Chinese women and killed thousands in what came to be known as the ‘Rape of Nanking.’  Many Japanese conservatives are now angry over what they call exaggerated stories of Japanese brutality during World War II.

Amid this new friction between China and Japan, anti-Japanese feelings over the Nanjing attacks among the Chinese have remained strong.  In its 70th anniversary, an American movie about the mass slaughter will open in China next week.  “Nanking” will premiere in Beijing and be released across China.  The movie mixes archival footage with actors’ readings of witness accounts from those who protected Chinese refugees.

For more information, please see:

–Rape of Nanking toll disputed

–China says ‘Rape of Nanking’ was atrocious crime that Japanese lawmakers cannot deny

–‘No massacre in Nanking,’ Japanese lawmakers say

–Film about 1937 Japanese assault on ‘Nanking’ to screen in China

American and NATO forces in Afghanistan have killed at least 203 civilians so far this year.

In the past ten days, airstrikes and artillery fire targeting Taliban insurgents have killed more than 90 civilians.

Separate figures from the U.N. and Afghan and international aid groups show that the numbers of civilians killed by international forces is about equal to those killed by insurgents.

Accurate civilian death tolls are hard to come by because militants often wear civilian clothing and seek shelter in homes. Also it is not unusual for Afghans to have weapons in their homes.

The Associated Press count of civilian casualties is based on reports from Afghan and foreign officials and witnesses through Saturday, June 23. Of the 399 civilian deaths this year, 18 civilians were killed in crossfire between Taliban militants and foreign forces.

Earlier Saturday, a rocket hit a house in Pakistani territory killing nine civilians — during a battle in which NATO and American forces killed 60 suspected Taliban.

Other fighting on Saturday left some 20 militants and one coalition soldier dead.

For more information, please see:

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007%5C06%5C21%5Cstory_21-6-2007_pg4_15

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070619/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1636551,00.html

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/13/africa/taliban.php

Peruvian ex- president Alberto Fujimori has been asked to consider running for office in Japan. He is now in Chile under house arrest, and faces extradition to because of human rights violations charges.

The Japanese People’s New Party urged Fujimori to run in July elections for the upper house of Japan’s Diet.

Fujimori was president of Peru from 1990 to 2000 and is a dual citizen of Japan and Peru. He lived in exile in Tokyo for five years, so he is technically eligible to run.

However, he is wanted by Peruvian prosecutors on several charges: ordering the murders of 25 people in 1991 and 1992, ordering the abduction and torture of opponents, and embezzling government funds. Critics say that he crushed civil liberties, rigged elections and abused human rights. If Fujimori is elected to parliament in Japan, that could affect his trial in Peru.

Fujimori resigned from office in November 2000.  He stayed in Japan until November 2005, until he flew to Chile and was arrested.

For more information, please see:

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200706190598.html

http://www.livinginperu.com/news/4095

http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,,2106439,00.html